Workbench
An assistant's working folder for drafts, notes, and intermediate artifacts.
- Desktop
- Web Portal
The Workbench is a folder the assistant uses as scratch space. Anything the assistant writes that isn’t memory and isn’t a code change in the working directory ends up here.
What goes in the workbench
- Draft documents — design docs, RFC outlines, PR descriptions.
- Intermediate analysis — log snippets the assistant pulled out for review.
- Reports — “what I did yesterday” summaries, weekly recaps.
- Anything you ask the assistant to keep handy that doesn’t belong in source code or in long-term memory.
Think of it as the assistant’s desk: messy, working, easy to throw away.
Where it lives
On disk, each assistant has its own workbench folder inside the assistant’s data directory. The desktop’s Workbench tab is the easier way to see it: a tree on the left, a preview pane on the right, with markdown rendered.
Editing files
Click any file in the workbench tree to open it. Markdown renders by default; switch to source view with the toggle at the top right. Edits are versioned in the assistant’s local history, the same way memory edits are.
To add a new file, right-click in the workbench tree and pick New file (or New folder). The assistant can read it on its next wake.
What’s the difference between workbench and memory?
| Memory | Workbench |
|---|---|
| Loaded into every wake briefing | Not loaded; the assistant reads on demand |
| Indexed and searchable | Browsed by hand |
| Soft and hard size caps | No caps |
| Versioned | Versioned |
| Structured (long-term, journal, reference, index) | Free-form |
If the assistant should always know it, put it in memory. If it’s a draft, a report, or a one-time artifact, put it in the workbench.
On the portal
Same layout. The portal exposes the workbench as another tab on the assistant detail view.
On mobile
Mobile doesn’t include the workbench tab in the current release. Use desktop or portal for workbench browsing. The assistant can still create and edit workbench files; you’ll just need a non-mobile surface to look at them.
What’s saved, what isn’t
- Saved: everything you or the assistant writes to the folder.
- Not saved: files in the assistant’s actual code working directory — those are tracked by git and managed separately.
Workbench files are part of the assistant’s local versioned history. If the assistant deletes a file you wanted to keep, you can recover it from the history view in the Workbench tab.
Related topics
- Memory — for things that must travel with every wake.
- Sessions started by an assistant — for the actual code work.